Angie lived a split life as a child in small-town Mississippi. During the week her mother had her in all kinds of activities and her stepfather was her rock. On the weekends her dad exposed her to alcohol, drugs, and abuse. Through it all, she suspected that she was adopted but her mother lied about it for 19 years. In reunion, Angie learned that her birth mother had seen her several times as a little girl on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. She got healing from her birth mother who said she always loved Angie and developed a cherished bond with her paternal grandmother who helped her navigate her emotions over her biological father.

The post 044 – She Never Met Me, But She Saw Me appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Angie (00:04):

When we got to our house, you know, we were getting ready for bed late and she says, you know, I just have to tell you something and I don't want it to scare you. And I don't want it to, you know, make you think I'm crazy. And I said, what? And she said, when I hugged you, she said, I felt like 42 years just went away. And she said, I felt my baby girl again. And I thought, I said, I did too,

Damon (00:32):

who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Angie. She called from Panama city, Florida where she and her husband live on the Bay. But Angie grew up in Mississippi with a tragic story in her childhood, but it was her normal. She didn't know she was adopted as a child, but she suspected it. And she asked about it. She was shooed away from the topic as a teenager. Her first son's medical needs meant she had to have a conversation with her adopted mother about the truth. That didn't go very well. When Angie's second son was born, her search began in earnest, but was boxed in by the small town community where everyone knew one another. So news of someone's adoption search traveled fast.

Damon (01:33):

After years of waiting. She finally did a DNA test in 2017 and was in touch with her family that same day when she met her birth mother, the healing was an unreal experience where her mother admitted she had definitely seen Angie as a child. This is Angie's journey. Angie thinks of her story as a bit of a fairy tale, starting off very harshly, but ending in a beautiful way. She grew up in central Mississippi in a very small town that only has two traffic lights and is still paved with bricks from the old days. It's the kind of place where literally everyone knows everyone else. When Angie was five years old, her parents divorced her adopted mother remarried and amazing man whom Angie adores.

Angie (02:20):

My adopted father was abusive. He was an alcoholic and an addict. So that was, you know, my horror story because I still had to go visit him on the weekends. So I grew up in a situation where I had to grow up very quickly. I mean, I saw things most people don't see until they are in their adulthood. And you know, even then they don't choose to see it. But my adopted mom remarried when I was six and she married an amazing man. And if I get a little choked up it's because he was my hero. He was everything. He was my daddy. He is who I call daddy, my adopted father. I call him by his first name. We've actually been estranged for 15 years now. And for good reason, you know, my mom, my mom had me in dance and gymnastics and every I started playing softball when I was five. To me, it was a normal childhood. And then on the weekends, you know, I had the horse show. So I kind of grew up like a split personality almost. I didn't know what bipolar was then, but you know, you get older and you learn what things are. But I almost felt like my life was either a double life or I was, you know, in a whole other realm or it was just, it was crazy to look back on.

Damon (03:45):

Did you catch what Angie said? She had to grow up very quickly seeing things that even adults sometimes choose not to see. She's about to explain some of the things she witnessed in her youth, the things she should not have been exposed to.

Angie (03:59):

I was eight years old when I learned how to drive. He taught me how to drive because he needed somebody to pick him up from the bars. Cause he was too drunk to drive home. So my first time driving a vehicle by myself, I think I was actually nine years old. And it was about one in the morning.

Damon (04:18):

What

Angie (04:19):

I've been. Yeah. I would spend Friday nights asleep in the front seat of his truck at the local brothel and it's a nice word to use for it. And then as I got older, I actually was brought into it. Um, and the lady who ran it would actually stick me in a back room for the night and I've actually had them call my mom to come pick me up from there. Uh, yeah. You know, I grew up with him having poker parties every weekend and alcohol and drugs, you know, being served like hors d'oeuvres and it was the local attorneys and judges and sheriff deputies. And you know, I, I, my best friend and I, um, she's kind of the only one that I can talk to. And you know, who knows all my secrets, you know, her and I have discussed, I could write a book and completely annihilate the entire existence and the salts of everyone in that city, because of all the dark secrets that I have. It, it was a very, uh, it was a tough childhood at the time. It was normal to me. But now that I look back on it, it's, it's horrific. It's stuff that children shouldn't see.

Damon (05:25):

She was driving a motor vehicle on the road with adults at nine years old because of his substance abuse for a kid, if that's your normal, you don't realize that an adult trusting you to be the responsible driver is abnormal at best not to mention completely irresponsible and illegal. Angie told me her adopted father was married seven times with countless girlfriends moving into and out of his home along the way. Thankfully, she had a much better and more appropriate lifestyle in her mother's home during the workweek counter balancing abominable behavior of her adoptive father on the weekends, she admits she loves her adopted mother, but it was her daddy, her mother's second husband, who was her rock,

Angie (06:07):

my mom and I never connected. We never had that mother daughter bond. We loved each other. Um, I loved that woman immensely and I know she loved me, but, um, you know, when she married my stepdad, he was everything that her and my adopted father never worked. He was nurturing and caring and supportive and he encouraged me and he gave me all of that, that I was missing. So, you know, he was, he was my, everything. I talked to him about all my problems. You know, I asked him about boys. It was, it was kind of like he was the mom and the dad in the family, you know, Monday through Friday, it was great. I mean, I, I loved my life at that house. And then, you know, Friday through Sunday, seven miles away, it was, you know, the horror show. So

Damon (07:05):

did you, did you get a sense that your mom knew what he was doing? And at any point when you were older, did you resist going into that horror show?

Angie (07:15):

I started telling my mom what he was doing when the, the physical sexual abuse started. I told her when I was 12 and she didn't, I can't say that she didn't believe me, but she didn't concern her enough to keep me from it.

Damon (07:33):

She didn't take it seriously enough.

Angie (07:36):

I don't think that was the case. Looking back, I feel like she felt her hands were tied because of his connections in the community that I don't think she could have done anything about it.

Damon (07:49):

Was he a prominent guy in the community?

Angie (07:51):

He was not, but all of his friends were, and he was basically their supplier. You know, you have court judges and district attorneys and Sheriff's deputies. And they come to his house on the weekends and there's drugs and booze and women. And I mean, he's their get away. And you know, I don't know if my mom thought this, but this is why I never went anywhere with it. Who's going to believe a 19 year old little girl, you know, who who's gonna believe that. But in her case, I went back on it and thinking, well, maybe she felt like who's going to believe this.

Damon (08:26):

There was no lawyer who could represent the case for the child. Endangerment. Angie lived through everyone in town was her adopted father's weekend escape buddy. And no one would corroborate her stories against him. Sadly, Angie said she was physically and sexually abused too. So I couldn't help wondering how her mother continued to let her go to the man's house every weekend. Eventually Angie arrived at a hypothesis for why, which she is still trying every day to forgive her mother for,

Angie (08:55):

she passed away five years ago and it's taking me five years to forgive her. And it's a daily struggle to this day to keep, to forgive her. Because as a mom, like I would have tore down, you know, the whole town and burned it to protect my child

Damon (09:14):

if she knew even. And I hope you'll forgive me. I don't by any means mean to minimize what you went through personally. But if I know, if my mom knew that my dad was taken me to brothels and I was driving his car and like all that other stuff, she would've been like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We are not doing this. But obviously the added layer of, of abuse would have been, that would have been it. And I just, I just wondered. Wow. Why would she continue to let you go back to that?

Angie (09:47):

Yeah. And I, I struggle with that to this day. Um, because the reason she left him was for the alcohol, the drug addiction, the abuse, the affairs, she left him for that reason. And then she, and, and then she didn't just let me go back. It was almost like she kept sending me. I've actually talked to one of my aunts a lot. Yeah. Since my mom passed. And you know, we think that her weekends with my stepdad were just more important to her because she had that, that alone time. And she got to be the number one in his life. Because Monday through Friday, I was, there was a lot of jealousy with my mother. She was, she's a very complex person, but I can see her is that person now. And not as my mother, you know, I look at her as who she was and what she went through in her life. And what, you know, I guess, calls her to make the decisions that she did.

Damon (10:42):

So that horror story was Angie's foundation for childhood. Also, she didn't actually know that she was adopted. She asked multiple times over the years, but her mother hid the truth. Then when Angie was a teenager, she felt confident there was something amiss. She confronted her mother again.

Angie (11:02):

I suspected it. And I even asked, but I was never told yes, I was, I was, it was always denied. No, you're not. But I think around 14, my best friend and I were just kind of like, okay, this doesn't make sense. You know, this isn't adding up. This doesn't add up. People are saying stuff. And I went to her and I said, I have a question. And she said, what? And I said, am I adopted? And you know, my response to my own child would be, have you lost your mind? No, you're not adopted. Look at you. You look like this person, this person, you know, no, her response was no. And don't worry about this anymore. I'm tired of you acting like, you know, you're different. You're not. And I got shooed away at 14, 14. I mean, I've had, I've been through three 14 year olds.

Angie (11:50):

You've got, you've got it set in your mind. You're not stupid. And that was my answer. I knew something was up. So then at that point, you know, we started coming up with these scenarios. I knew my birth, my adopted father was fooling around. I knew he had so many wives. So we thought maybe he had an affair. And she, you know, they, she took me in. She adopted me, you know, that would make why else would she be? So, um, I used to work cruel because that's the only word I, I know for it. You know, why else would you send your child into this den of debauchery every weekend if I wasn't hers. So I knew for a fact, I knew in my heart, I was not her child. I did not know that I was not. now on a side note, my mother was diabetic. She had juvenile diabetes. So she had a hysterectomy when she was 17, so she could not have children. So that nurture bond that comes in when you birth a child, she didn't have, she didn't have it. She didn't know any way to get it. I hold. That is a main reason why her and I never clicked and why she couldn't ever understand the role of a parent. You know, that unconditional unwavering love no matter what, she just didn't have it. I mean, all, all of everything that made her a woman was gone at 17.

Speaker 4 (13:15):

Yeah. I could see how the Nate, the nature to nurture just would not kick in. I mean, if you're supposed to be at a place in your life, as you get to be a young woman and your hormones are starting to click and make you feel like it's time to start thinking about a family, like if all of that has been surgically removed, you're not going to be in a position to feel that about a child. I know I should probably take that back actually, because I would imagine that that could also be a very driving factor for why a woman might feel a need to adopt a child and actually really try hard to connect because she couldn't do that for whatever adverse reasons. So I'm wondering about her, her history, you said, uh, it sounded like you were saying that she had, had her own challenged history, even outside of the relationship with your adoptive father.

Angie (14:05):

Yes. Growing up, I always knew that my mother had an older sister that passed away in childbirth and that, um, my mother never knew her. She passed away before my mother was born, which I didn't find odd at the time. You know? Cause you're talking about the fifties, the forties in the fifties, you know, my...